The present invention relates to graphical user interface techniques for multiple users. More specifically, the invention relates to privacy within a shared workspace.
A number of techniques have been proposed for enabling multiple users to work together through a data processing system.
Stefik, M., Bobrow, D. G., Foster, G., Lanning, S., and Tatar, D., "WYSIWIS Revised: Early Experiences with Multiuser Interfaces," ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, Vol. 5, No. 2 (April 1987), pp. 147-167, described multiuser interfaces that provide users with simultaneous, shared access to a database. Pages 149 and 158 described how such an interface may include both public or multiuser windows and private or single-user windows. The section beginning on page 152 deals with various relaxations of strict WYSIWIS ("what you see is what I see"--each user sees the same thing). Some WYSIWIS relaxations introduce privacy into public windows. Page 161 describes how certain display regions can be used primarily for the placement of private windows and how a density map can be used to show where private windows tend to be located without revealing their contents. Foster, G., Collaborative Systems and Multi-user Interfaces, Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Computer Science Division, Report No. CSD/UCB 86/326, 1986, pp. 33-68, 87-90, and 121-132, discusses multi-user interfaces. Pages 36, in discussing time and space tradeoffs, mentions that an approach to the screen space problem is to allow private views of shared data. Pages 44-47 discuss WYSIWIS relaxations that permit private views of public objects, as well as private objects. FIG. 3.9 illustrates individual views of a shared model. Pages 87-89 describe busy signals to help avoid conflict between participants. As shown in FIG. 4.9, a busy item is greyed out in all views when being edited, moved, or grouped, warning other participants of the work in progress. Pages 121-132 discuss database management techniques to avoid conflict.
Trigg, R. H., Suchman, L. A., and Halasz, F. G., "Supporting Callaboration in NotesCards," Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Austin, Tex., Dec. 3-5 1986, pp. 153-162, described collaboration in a hypertext-based idea structuring system identified by the trademark NoteCards, a trademark of Xerox Corporation. Pages 155 describes basic features of the system, in which multiple cards can be simultaneously displayed on a screen, each card in a separate window. Pages 158-159 described simultaneous sharing of a notefile containing a number of cards, contrasting it with draft-passing and pointing out that real-time communication requires special mechanisms. In Distributed NoteCards, any number of users can simultaneously read and display a given card, but permission to modify the card is restricted to one user at a time. Garrett, L. N. Smith, K. E., and Meyrrowitz, N., "Intermedia: Issues, Strategies, and Tactics in the Design of a Hypermedia Document System," Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Austin, Tex., Dec. 3-5, 1986, pp. 163-174, describe Intermedia, a framework and collection of tools that allows authors to link together the contents of documents over a workstation network. Pages 171-173 describe a multi-user environment in which multiple authors would have simultaneous access to documents. Section 5.1 discusses accesses control to allow individuals working together to have full access to their shared data, while preventing those without permission from viewing or modifying such data. Read access allows the user to examine the content of a document and follow links; annotate access further allows the user to add links and modify the added links, but not to alter the content of the document; write access further allows the user to modify the content of the document. Similar access rights could apply to a web of documents. If contention management permits multiple writers, complex chalk-passing and synchronization protocols are required.
Sarin, S. and Greif, I., "Computer-Based Real-Time Conferencing Systems," Computer, October 1985, pp. 33-45, discuss a number of features or real-time conferencing systems. Page 33 draws a distinction between a shared space of each screen in which each participant sees the same information and private spaces on the screens that allow a participants to view relevant private data or compose and review information before submitting it to the shared space. FIG. 1, as described at page 35, illustrates shared and private spaces. Pages 37-39 discuss a number of design issues, including shared versus individual views, access control, and concurrency control. Under shared versus individual views, Sarin and Grief note that conference participants may want to view different parts of a large shared space, such as different documents or drawings, or different sections of a large document. Under concurrency control, they note that problems can be avoided by allowing only one participant at a time to update the shared space, which can be generalized by having participants set reservations on different parts of the shared space.
Fisher, S. S., McGrreevy, M., Humphries, J., and Robinett, W., "Virtual Environment Display System," presented at ACM Workshop on Interactive 3D Graphics, Chapel Hill, N.C., October 1986, describe a head-mounted, wide-angle, stereoscopic display system controlled by operation position, voice and gesture. This system provides a virtual environment, illustrated in FIG. 3, and FIG. 6 shows a virtual environment workstation. FIG. 9 illustrates how a three-dimensional graphic database of an articulated hand that, in the display environment, is spatially correspondent with the viewer's real hand and is directly controlled by an instrument glove device. This allows the operator to pick up and manipulate virtual objects that appear in the surrounding virtual environment. Similarly, as illustrated in FIG. 12, the operator can manipulate virtual objects to position, size, and activate multiple windows of information and simulated control panels. Page 9 mentions that one major research issue is definition of interface configurations for shared workspace environments in collaborative systems management.
Bolt, R. A., The Human Interface, Lifetime Learning Publications, Belmont, Calif., 1984, pp. 8-34, describes Dataland, a spatial data-management system for use in the Media Room, shown in FIGS. 2-1. FIGS. 2-5 shows how a large screen in the Media Room functions as a magnifying glass onto Dataland, an image of which appears on a smaller worldview monitor. Pages 21-25 describe CCA's system that can provide a set of information spaces with transistion points called ports between the spaces, as illustrated in FIGS. 2-16. One of the design issues discussed at pages 26-28 is the sharing of a Dataland with others users.
Herot, C. F., "Spatial Management of Data," ACM Transactions on Database Systems, Vol. 5, No. 4, December 1980, pp. 493-514, describes CCA's system in more detail. Page 494 discusses the simultaneous presentation of a world view, as in FIG. 3, and a detailed view of the data surface, as in FIGS. 4-7. Pages 506 describes a method of accessing videodisk data in which the user can zoom in on a particular icon to see an associated frame of videodisk data or a sequence of videodisk images.
Henderson, D. A., Jr., and Card, S. K., "Rooms: The Use of Multiple Virtual Workspaces to Reduce Space Contention in a Window-Based Graphical User Interface," ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 5, No. 3, July 1986, pp. 211-243, describe various solutions to the problem of small computer display screens at pages 212-216. Page 215 discusses several system that provide a large virtual workspace in which the screen is treated as a movable viewport onto the workspace. Page 216 discuses the problem of navigation, or finding the way to information without getting lost, pointing out that systems with large virtual workspaces base much of their navigation on translating and zooming and may provide both global and local views. Pages 216-217 discuss the problem of simultaneous access to separated information, and mention that the same piece of information may be logically associated with more than one part of the workspace. Pages 221-237 discuss the design of a system called Rooms, a trademark of Xerox Corporation. Pages 237-241 discuss specific design issues, including the use of accelerators such as overviews and pop-up means for task switching in a large virtual workspace.
The Maze Wars video game is played by more than one player, with each player seeing two views of a maze. One view is a view of the maze from above, within which each player can see the walls of the entire maze as well as a special display feature representing that player's current position within the maze. The other view is a horizontal view from that player's current position, in which the player can see the surrounding walls and can also see a display feature representing another player's current position, but only if the other player's current position is not obscured by a maze wall.